


Conversations With Ghosts

by miss_grey



Series: Conversations with Ghosts [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Haunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 17:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7323682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_grey/pseuds/miss_grey





	Conversations With Ghosts

 

 

 

1.

I’m not afraid of ghosts anymore.

 

2.

 

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of screaming.  Ghastly, heart-wrenching screaming.  It’s a sound I can’t even explain if you haven’t heard it.  It’s terrible.  I sit in bed, quietly, for a moment, and I just listen.  Not because it’s the only thing I can do, and not because I’m afraid.  But because _someone_ needs to listen, and it might as well be me.  So I listen, until the screaming stops and the walls go still again.  Then I go back to sleep.

 

3.

 

One time I sat on my couch, head in my hands, simply exhausted from another long, never-ending week at work.  The house was dim—I hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights yet, and outside the sun was going down.  It started quietly, and I almost dismissed it as part of my own melt-down, the inevitable when you’ve become this exhausted.  But then it continued for a time, reaching a crescendo that I could no longer ignore.  The moans were agonizing, like they were wrenched from someone who’d been forced to drag around a back-breaking load and it was slowly crushing them to death.  There were no rattling chains, but then there didn’t need to be.  The pain and hopelessness in the sounds was already too raw, too honest to bear. 

I sighed and stared into empty space, because of course, there was nothing there.  “I feel ya,” I answered.

 

4.

_GET OUT. LEAVE._

The words were smudged into the steam on the bathroom mirror.  I stood naked, and dripping in front of it, and stared at it for a moment, my heart galloping in my chest from the surge of adrenaline and terror. 

But the longer I stood there, the slower my heart rate became, as the terror was replaced with the sharp cold of disdain.

“Don’t you think I would if I could?”  I snarled at the air.  My own reflection snarled back at me.  “Don’t you think so?  That’s a lovely suggestion, but unfortunately I’m broke as fuck and I don’t have that option!”  I forced myself to take a deep breath.  Part of me realized that I sounded crazy, but I didn’t care.  I watched my reflection’s eyes narrow.  “So.  I’m gonna stay.  And you get to deal with me.  Just like I get to deal with you.  Get over it.”

 

5.

 

The thing I hate the most is waking to the sound of heavy breathing in my ear.  It’s not the heavy breathing of a sated lover, or even of a panting dog.  It’s the heavy breathing that we’re all programmed to hate, the heavy breathing that our mothers warned us about all our lives.  It’s the heavy breathing that induces fear, the cold terror that can strike from the end of a phone line and an untraceable number.

Deep, rapid, just a tad-wheezing.  So close I can feel it on my cheek, rustling my hair, condensing on my ear.  Too close.

I swallow the scream that is clawing its way up my throat, and clamp down hard on my heart and every single other muscle that is shaking with the effort of holding my body still when all I want to do is fly out of bed, and down the stairs, and out the door, and never stop running for the rest of my life because nowhere is ever gonna be far away enough from this, this….

My voice shakes and my throat is thick with unshakeable fear, restricted still to force control, when I say, as convincingly as I can, “Fuck off.  I’m trying to sleep here.”

I close my eyes, but I never fall back asleep on those nights.  But I don’t let myself move or get up either.  The key to the bluff means holding my ground.

6.

 

I reached a turning point one evening when I came home late from pulling a double shift to find my home destroyed.

My things were in ruins, broken and torn.  The couch and chair were shredded, my books had been flung from their shelves, and my dishes were smashed on the floor. 

There was no question of what had happened.

I could still hear the distinct wailing coming from the walls, and the house was cold as ice.

I wanted to run.  I wanted to never come back.  I wanted to go back a year, and never sign the contract that brought me here.  But it was too late for all of that.

I was out of options.  Out of money, out of chances.  Out of energy to care.

So I stood among the wreckage of my belongings, feeling the loss of anything held sacred, any sense of safety I’d ever had, as it slipped through my fingers.

I wanted to sink into the ground.  I was so tired.  So tired.  Words can’t even express.  You have to know what I’m talking about to get it.  I mean the kind of tired you feel when you’ve carried as much as you can carry, and then one day something in you breaks, and the weight crushes you, but it feels like release, because you no longer care, and so all you can do is stand, and look, and breathe.

I stood there, looking and breathing, for a very long time, until the wailing finally stopped.  My shoulders and chest moved with my breath, and my eyes occasionally scanned the room once more, but that’s all I did, until finally I spoke.

“Look…I could be really scared or really pissed right now, but I’m too tired to be scared, and I’ve decided to cut you some slack because I don’t feel like dealing with this right now.  My life is falling apart.  I hope you know that.  My life is falling apart, and I’m doing the best that I can to hold it together.  And here you are actually wrecking my shit.  Thanks.  I want you to know that now on top of trying to keep myself sane, now I need to buy new dishes and clean the house.  Seriously though, thanks for that.  But I’m gonna let it go.  Because as shitty as my life is right now, I know that you’re dead.  Yours is worse.  You win.”

 

7.

Sometimes the ghost moves my things around randomly, so that I can never find what I’m looking for.  I’m talking about my left socks finding their way into the freezer, or my keys ending up in one of my potted plants.

At first it scared the hell out of me.  Then I tried to stop it.  Then I tried to ignore it.

Now, I mostly just grumble “I hope you know you’re like the worst fucking roommate ever.”

 

8.

 

Sometimes, while I’m reading or watching tv, or doing some other mundane thing, the room will suddenly be wafted with strange, untraceable scents that sort of remind me of my childhood, though I can never figure out what they are, or why they fill me with such aching nostalgia.

Mostly, I notice it in silence, and I busy myself with puzzling out what the scent is, and why it hits me in the core.

One time, though, when I found myself curled on the couch with a book, I decided to embrace it, and take it for the reprieve that it obviously was. 

I felt brave enough to say, “I know you’re there.  It’s not so bad like this.  Thanks for not….  Well.  Thanks.”

 

9.

 

One night I woke to the sound of quiet crying, the kind a person makes when they curl in on themselves and their shoulders shudder with the effort of holding themselves together.  The foot of my bed dipped under an invisible weight.

I sat up in bed and pulled my knees to my chest, where I hugged them tightly until I started to lose the feeling in my fingers.  I stared at the empty space for a long time as the crying continued.

Finally, I forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat and I murmured, “It fucking sucks, doesn’t it?  I’m sorry.”

 

10.

“ ** _GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!_** ”

“And then what?!  Some other person is just gonna move in here after me!  And who knows?  Maybe they’ll be a _real_ asshole?  Maybe they’ll just exorcise you!   At least I put up with your shit!  At least I _deal_ with you.  But you gotta accept it, man.  Someone’s gonna live here.  You can’t chase people out for all of eternity.  It’s not practical!  Don’t you ever get tired?”

 

11.

 

The ghost likes to move among the shadows, so that I can only see it, a darkness among the darkness, out of the corner of my eye. 

I always look at it.  Right at it.  I follow it as it moves, or until it dissolves into nothingness again.  I want it to know that I can see it, that I know it’s there.  It’s not for the ghost’s benefit.  Not this time.  It’s because I want it to know that it can’t watch me like that without having the favor returned.  People never feel quite as brave when they know they’re being watched. 

The ghost likes to watch me, likes to have that power.  I won’t let it do that to me, though.  So I always turn to look back at it.  If it wants to watch, it’s going to be watched.  We’ll really get to know each other, then.

One time, it rocked anxiously back and forth in the corner where the light from the lamp could not reach, shuddering on the edge of disappearing, but not quite managing it.  Like it was debating which way was the safest to run to escape my unwavering stare.

I was feeling real hostile that night, and I decided not to spare the ghost any sympathy, so I said “I can see you, ya know.  Stop being such a fucking creeper.”

The shadow stopped moving.  It straightened for a minute, and almost seemed to exhale.  And then it disappeared. 

 

12.

I’ve had way worse apartment neighbors than this.

 

13.

“Anne?”

“…”

“Mary?”

“…”

“Jane?”

“…”

 

14.

 

“Where the hell are my shoes?  Where did you put them?  God damn it, not today!  I can’t find my fucking shoes and I’m already going to be late!  Jesus Christ, I don’t know why I put up with you.  I don’t know why I don’t just call in a priest and get this shit over and done with!  If you like where you’re at, you better _leave my fucking shoes alone!_ ”

 

15.

 

“Louis?”

“…”

“Frank?”

“…”

“Jean-Claude van-fucking-Damme?”

“…”

 

16.

 

“Fuck it, I’m calling you Katie, because you won’t tell me and I’m tired of guessing.”  I moved the pot of pasta from the burner so that I could drain it.  Above me, the kitchen light flickered.  It was normal.  Well, _normal._ “I’m tired of calling you The Ghost.”  A sudden, violent banging emanated from the wall in the next room.  It wasn’t the neighbor.  “Too bad, Katie.”  I strained the pasta, threw it back into the pot, then added some sauce.  “Do you ever miss eating?”  The banging in the wall intensified.

 

17.

 

The cursor on my laptop blinked, hugging close to the single word on the otherwise solid white word document.  _Gemma._

I smiled, softly.  “Gemma.  That’s pretty.” 

Across the room, a soft, relieved sigh.

 

18.

 

A rattling doorknob woke me at 3:35 in the morning.  I ripped the sheets off and stormed over to the door, kicking it, until the rattling stopped.  “Hey Gemma!”  I called into the darkness of the room, “Why don’t you quit being a dick and let me sleep!  I have work tomorrow!”

 

19.

 

“Hey Gemma… I’m sorry.”  I said, wrapping my hands tightly around the hot coffee mug.  It was the only thing holding me to the ground this morning.  It was about 4:05 am and the sun wasn’t even up yet, but good, strong coffee is a godsend.  It had been a rough day, followed by a rough night.  I’ve had the worst nightmares all my life.

An invisible weight settled on the porch steps next to me, solid and _there,_ for all that it wasn’t.  The street lights were dim and the stars had faded.  And I thought I heard a voice murmur _Me too._


End file.
